The 68,000 km² “white-gold” wasteland

A 2 hour flight from the civilised east of Tashkent lies this rather arid skeletal looking patch of Asia. As you gear down on the edge of this depleted lunar scape you’ll find the last city to the west, Nukus. From here we suggest a stock up on comfort before a 3 hour drive to the corroded port town of Moynaq - the largest settlement of the Aral Sea region, populated with 12,000 committed locals trying to forget the past. This once booming fishing centre is now left with Insta-esque rusted fishing boats sat on a horizon of sandy seascape. 

But what happened? The answer (as the soviets called it) “white-gold”. The early 60’s saw an opportunity for economic growth in the region by the Soviet Union, the question spiraling around Moscow was the product of choice in this hazy landscape. Cotton, fast to produce and easy to sell. Within months the Syr Darya River was almost fully diverted from the sea and directed to irrigate dusty plains. Within a decade the sea was doomed and left to drought on the western edge of the now cotton-rich country. 

Today the glum soviet past of the Aral Sea seems to have been well and truly forgotten by the young local Uzbeks, with weekend desert camps and whacky scientists flocking the region to uncover the earthly remains of the millennia old seabed. The long gone mirror of Uzbekistan’s version of the Dead Sea is a destination in itself.